


Fantasy

by head_archivist



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, this is just indulgent gay to be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/head_archivist/pseuds/head_archivist
Summary: A companion piece tothiswork.Martin fantasizes about what could be.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	Fantasy

Martin hangs up the phone.

Jon hadn't been unkind. He hadn't made any jabs - at least, no real ones. He'd been softer than Martin had ever heard him, more pliable, more open. 

And some deep, terrible part of him had wanted to use that. Some awful piece of him had been so ready to force Jon to open up a little more and tease out his feelings. He could have asked how Jon really feels about him. He was vulnerable and compliant and would almost certainly have been honest.

It would have been simple, he thinks, lying on his back in his bed. Alone, as always. He could easily sprawl across it, it's more than large enough, but he never does. He keeps neatly to one side and leaves the other for an intangible lover.

Perhaps that would have been a bad idea, though, to ask his true feelings. Martin couldn’t possibly bear to hear anything suggesting Jon might not actually like him - not even, you know, romantically. Just even as a friend. If there weren’t any kindness there at all, his heart would have shattered.

_ I imagine being held, _ he'd said, and that much was true. Not the whole truth, though. He could have told Jon exactly what he thinks of, when he allows himself to indulge in the fantasy. He could have been honest. Laid all his cards on the table. 

But something had stopped him. 

Jon had called him. He’d reached out. There must be  _ something _ there, right?

It's just past five AM, according to his phone screen. Martin folds his hands together over his belly. He himself is soft, a little larger than he’d like to be, while Jon is made of angles: he's slender, his joints so pointed that Martin sometimes fears they'll simply tear through the skin, like a bone badly broken. Lanky, some people might say. Martin knows better. He calls Jon  _ sharp.  _

When he imagines, he can't help but wonder if Jon might become a little softer if they were to come together. 

Martin closes his eyes and sets the scene. It's a summer day, and the air is a warm blanket. There is a park. Grass. Sprawling trees. They lay underneath one and there's the faintest hint of a breeze. 

He can feel his breathing slowing. There's a warmth coursing through his veins as he imagines laying side by side with Jon. Martin tries to take it slowly, this beautiful thought, to stretch it out and make it last. 

Perhaps, he thinks, there is music this time! And just like that, he can hear a faint piano strain. He focuses on it, preparing himself for the next bit. 

Jon reaches his hand out. He has such slender hands. The fingers are long and the joints are prominent. 

For just a single electric moment, their fingers touch. 

Martin's eyes snap open. He feels as though his heart might burst. He's flustered and he can feel the blood rising in his face. If he's so enamoured that he can't even think about holding hands, what would possibly happen if Jon were really to take his hand? To drape an arm around his shoulders? To k -

He can't even think the word to himself. 

_ Oh, Martin, you idiot. _ Jon hadn't said those words with any anger or malice. In fact, they'd been - gentle, somehow. Almost affectionate. Martin desperately grasps at the memory of Jon's voice, dark, sweet, less sharp than usual. He has a curious voice, hard to describe. It's as though he's attempting to speak in a lower range than is natural. Is all of Jon protected by carefully constructed walls? Martin thinks this must be so. How he would love the chance to break those walls down. 

Back to the vision. Martin realises he’s barely been blinking. He closes his eyes again.

Their fingers touch. Martin fumbles and grasps Jon’s hand as a drowning man clutches a lifeline. He’s been drowning for so long, he thinks, drowning in these feelings he can’t quite name and certainly can’t control. Jon jerks away at first (and it’s strange, that he would do this in Martin’s fantasy, that he would behave so typically like him), but settles into the touch and squeezes Martin’s hand.

Now comes the best part of the fantasy. Jon turns his head, and so does Martin, and they lock eyes. There’s something fiery in the gaze.

Jon smiles.

And oh, God, that smile! It’s so rare, and when it comes, it’s fleeting, but in Martin’s fantasy it stretches out and lights up his whole face and it stays put and it’s so incredibly lovely that he tears up a little bit. He can feel a tear tracking down his face from his closed eyes. 

Greying hair, deep brown eyes, lips so often drawn into a thin line that Martin sometimes forgets the fullness of them - there’s beauty, and then there’s Jon’s angular face, and certainly no one else would call him beautiful but in Martin’s eyes he’s perfection itself. Jon wears his hair longish. Martin often wonders what it would be like to tuck an errant lock back behind his ear. He does that now in his fantasy, letting go of Jon’s hand and running a hand through his hair. Is it coarse or soft? Martin likes to believe it’s somewhere between the two. It satisfies him to think that because it’s so characteristic. Jon himself walks the edge between coarse and soft. He’s all sharp words and thoughtful looks and yet there are some moments, like when he smiles, when Martin can see something sweet in him.

Martin shivers and suddenly realizes just how cold and empty his bed is. The fantasy fades. Sometimes it’s difficult to hold on to, and when it ends, he feels so alone that it aches just behind his sternum.

Martin picks up his phone and types out a text message, then deletes the whole thing. Types out another. Erases it again. He wants to hurl his phone across the room. He wants to smash it against the floor. He wants to swallow it whole. 

Finally he settles on the right message:  _ Hey Jon. I hope you slept well. If you need anything else you can always let me know. I’m here for you. Always. _ _   
_ He considers the last word, then erases it. Before he can overthink and stop himself he sends the message. Martin hopes fervently that it doesn’t wake Jon - or annoy him when he does wake up. Perhaps sending that message was a mistake. 

There’s a different thought in the back of his mind now, one that refuses to be ignored. It's about Jon, again. It's always about Jon. In his fantasy Jon invites him over. Martin has never seen it but he knows, as he knows certain other immutable truths of the universe, that the flat is neatly disorganized. There is a desk in the living room heaped with papers in semi regular piles. A towering shelf is crammed full of books, haphazardly stuffed in wherever they fit. More books are stacked on the nightstand. All these things are in their proper place, but strewn about by a man too busy to pay much mind to cleaning up. Jon's sofa is weathered and the cushions have been flipped too many times. He is not one to clutter his space with too many belongings, and aside from the books the flat seems oddly unlived in. A bit too sterile. Martin aches to make it a home. 

Do they settle on the sofa? Or do they go to Jon's room? They're tired, Martin decides, and Jon leads him into the bedroom. The bed is spartan; there are just two pillows, one immaculately fluffed, the other concave where Jon's head rests at night. Jon sits on the edge of the bed. Martin hesitates, then sits beside him. The world doesn't end. 

Jon lays back and Martin follows suit. For a long, agonizing moment, they don't touch. Eventually, Jon half rolls and drapes an arm over Martin's chest, hand resting on his shoulder. 

"Martin, I -" says fantasy Jon, and then he stops. That's not terribly realistic, is it? 

Martin grapples with the dream for a moment. It's slipping away from him, skipping like a scratched record. Desperately he grasps at the wisps of it. Bed. Hand. Shoulder. Held. He is laying on the bed with Jon's hand on his shoulder and he is being held. He's being held. He's being held. What comes next? Not a confession. Even in his wildest dreams Martin can't begin to hope for that. 

"Martin, I need -" 

No, that isn't right either. 

Finally the pieces click into place. 

"Thank you, Martin," says Jon in a voice dark and sweet like molasses. It's not pitched down, the way it usually is. It's just… real. 

One wall down, a thousand to go.

“You’re welcome,” Martin whispers aloud without realizing he’s speaking.

It’s those three words he holds on to. He replays them again and again in his mind as he feels his body become heavy. He has a habit of shifting around a lot in bed, trying to get comfortable before he sleeps, but right now he’s perfectly still, breathing shallowly, as though if he moves the dream will fade away.

“Thank you, Martin,” says dream Jon again. He repeats it, this time slightly softer, a little slower. “Thank you, Martin.”

And so it goes, over and over, replaying like a favourite song on loop. The words are close enough to music that it may as well be a song. Martin’s bones are concrete anchoring him to his bed. To Jon’s bed. These two places exist in the same space. He is being held.

Jon’s breath smells like mint and something darker, like the crackle of split wood just introduced to a smouldering fire.

Martin takes a deep breath and inhales Jon’s scent, his mint-honey-firewood breath, a floral aroma rising from his hair, a clean smell from his clothes, and underneath all that something that’s just so completely  _ him _ that it hurts. He’s surrounded by that smell and he’s gone, away into darkness, nothing but a starless sky behind his eyes, and Jon is  _ holding _ him and he drifts and that’s all there is.

* * *

When the alarm on his phone goes off, Martin isn’t surprised to see there’s no reply from Jon. He opens up the message history and sees, just underneath the outgoing text:  _ Read at 6:12 AM. _

It isn’t as though he’d expected anything different, but it still stings.

He puts himself mechanically inside of his clothes and brushes his teeth for far too long, and he doesn’t register what he’s doing until his gums begin to hurt. He’s going to be late to work and Jon will be so disappointed in him.

He doesn’t get a chance to check his phone again until he’s left his building. On his walk to the train, he digs it out of his pocket, whistling a little to try and distract himself from the empty yawning in his stomach, and notices a new message.

It’s from Jon.

He stops still on the corner, completely ignoring the fact that he’s standing in the way of several people trying to cross the street, and opens it, heart thudding.

It simply reads,  _ Thank you. _

Formal. Concise. Martin can hear it in his voice, picture the way Jon tilts his chin down when he’s trying to talk at a particularly deep pitch. He only does that when he’s scared, Martin has noticed. This seems as appropriate a time as any for Jon to be frightened - after all, he’s terrified of opening up. This much Martin knows for sure.

It’s everything he could have wanted in a reply: an admission of gratitude. Martin is needed, which means he must matter, at least a little bit.

He presses his phone to his lips.

He goes to work.

**Author's Note:**

> thank for read
> 
> now i'm like 62 eps in and they're still killing me


End file.
